Several novels and a decade on from the Mike Shayne short
story I cited in commenting on DAMES, DANGER, DEATH, Dresser
is clearly getting a little tired of the big redhead. Shayne
is a bit too easily flummoxed, his reporter buddy capable of
putting a little too much together for him...of course, if
Shayne wasn't constantly downing cognac and icewater (or
cognac and coffee) and not sleeping, it might help his
reasoning ability. Some of the bad old tropes found in the
likes of the Saint stories (the ridiculously well-known
sleuth, which presumably can't help his work much--the last
time I remember a PI getting a lot of press w/o being
enmeshed in scandal was J. J. Armes a quarter-century ago, he
of the artificial arm much tricked out. I must admit I don't
know if the press was more interested in PIs a half-century
ago) and others are popping up in this mildly entertaining
story, along with (most of) Dresser's characters' enthusiasm
for artful ecdyasts and the New Deal, and corresponding
hostility to puritans and McCarthyism. Wonder how brave the
latter was at the time. Probably not a little, but, as with
anti-red-baiting sf of the time, most cf was probably not
taken seriously enough to be worthy of the HUAC-types'
grandstanding...unless the story was filmed or broadcast.
TM
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 10 Jan 2003 EST